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Libertarian Ponderings
Most of the content on this page should be placed in another container. Rants from other email lists The Portland Purge :On Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:25:00 -0500, Jon Roland wrote: It amazes me how some members of this list cling to the proposition that the deletion of most of the Platform was an act of deliberation. It was not a conspiracy. There was no plan. It was just a cockup. It resulted from these simple factors: 1. Conference organizers neglected to print copies of the Platform and distribute them with the conference packet. They explained that they expected attendees to just download and print the Platform from the lp.org website. That was expecting too much of them. 2. Attendees weren't going to vote for what they didn't have in writing in their hands. 3. The Platform Committee didn't really get down to work until the members actually arrived at the meeting two days before the convention, and didn't allow enough time to agree of a list of planks to recommend retaining. They got bogged down on consolidating planks. The result of that work was presented to the conference and approved, because the members could read it on the screen. But there wasn't time to print or distribute copies of anything. 4. Left with that, the majority of attendees voted not the retain most of the remaining planks. I was one who so voted, because there was two hours set aside on the agenda ("orders of the day") at the end of Sunday to introduce any planks that needed to go back in. Many people had those planks prepared and submitted them to the Secretary for presentation in numbered order. 5. Before we could get to those planks, one member (also a member of the Platform Committee), Jim Duensing of Nevada, apparently for no other reason than that he was pissed off at a motion just made and defeated by Aaron Starr of California, moved to adjourn, and as a motion to adjourn is not debatable, and the attendees were tired and didn't know what was about to be introduced, other than stuff that was just going to take up a lot of time, voted to adjourn. 6. Immediately afterward there was a lot of remorse about the adjournment. Jim Duensing admitted to me he screwed up. A lot of the attendees, when I explained what was about to be introduced, admitted if they had known they would not have voted to adjourn. 7. It simply never occurred to most of the attendees how all this would be misconstrued by the larger membership. Libertarians may include a lot of computer professionals, but most are not adept at complex systems analysis or long-term impact analysis. Like the public generally, they tend to be impulsive and prefer not to think deeply about what they are doing, or to spend a lot of effort preparing for anything. 8. So we make mistakes, and hopefully learn from it. We can do better in 2008 if we learn from this and don't engage in ridiculous accusations. -- Jon